Restart
by flax
Summary: What is there to do when the fates won't let you retire? (Complete)
1. Drop By Anytime

Restart by flax   
  
JK Rowling owns the characters. They're only in this daydream for a profitless romp. :)   
  
CHAPTER ONE: Drop by any time  
  
It had been a rough couple of years, and with Voldemort defeated, Hermione Granger had all she could imagine: time off and peace. So she sat on her porch one early spring afternoon, somewhat sprawled after some hard work in her garden (without her wand). Crookshanks sprawled nearby after a full day of sniffing and racing. Then with the aid of the wand, Hermione produced a small cool drink. It sat near by on a small table. The sun felt good and she just relaxed, imagining herself to be a snake warming on a rock.  
  
Then someone got between her and her nice setting sun. Hermione blinked up at what cloud this could be and nearly choked on her tongue as she fingered after her wand and tried to restart her brain.  
  
However, Severus Snape, famously dead hero of the war on Voldemort, was looking more confused than she.  
  
And then he colapsed to the ground.  
  
Granger looked everywhere as fast as she could, the habits of war with her again. But nothing seemed wrong. Every extra sense had kicked on, and nothing seemed different. Unless she wanted to see the sky itself as malevolent, or the trees, or the new planted rose bushes - all sticks and thorns - there was nothing wrong, except a dead hero, lost fifteen years ago in the conclusive battle, was here, collapsed in her garden, today. (Fortunately for him, in the herb bed.)  
  
Granger checked him for the basics, found him alive, levitated him into her guest room, and dispatched an owl. She was too freaked to editorialize and found it easier to not wonder if this was a good or a bad thing.  
  
tbc... 


	2. That Redecorating There is Temporary, Ye...

Restart by flax JK Rowling owns the characters. They're only in this daydream for my profitless romp. :)

CHAPTER TWO: That Redecorating There is Temporary, Yes?

Dumbledore was there by nightfall. Apparently for an overnight visit. That would explain the new room. As the house-bell rang, Hermione found the new door attached to her hallway, and beyond it, a whole new room.

"Headmaster Dumbledore!", she cried joyfully, having opened the front door. She hugged him spontaneously. The jolly old fiend hugged her back and asked her how she was as she invited him in.

"Well, well!" she answered, wondering how to get around to the subject of her visitor who probably belonged in St. Mungos or a military encampment. If they hadn't all been disbanded. Now that the war was over. It was so hard to talk about those things now.

"I hope it's not a problem if I stay for at least the night? You have such a nice view and it's so peaceful here," asked the Headmaster obliquely.

"Oh, I'd love the company!" she answered happily. Granger found herself comfortable in hostess mode, offering her former general and headmaster a bit of dinner. He accepted, asking if he could freshen up and see her other guest for a moment first.

"Of course!" chirped Granger, and bustled off to the dining room.

"Let's be hopeful," said Dumbledore after her, "set a place for Severus?" He took a tiny bag out of his pocket and into the new room in Hermione Granger's small retreat cottage. If anyone had been looking, which no one was, they would have seen the room suddenly become a well furnished mix between a library and a bedroom. After a bit of tweaking here and there, he wandered next door to the guest room where his old comrade, friend and follower lay sleeping in what was not a completely mystical faint.

Dumbledore sat and studied the man for a few moments. He went out and looked about for answers in the garden. Granger came out and silently waited. When Dumbledore looked at her, she pointed to exactly where Snape had appeared. "I thought he was a cloud over the sun, at first," said Granger, also pointing to where she had sat. Dumbledore smiled and nodded before returning to prowling her garden.

In time he looked up and gave his pronouncement. "Perhaps dinner?" he said.

"Ready," answered Granger.

"Could you let Severus know?"

It wandered through Granger's mind that she probably looked like Crooshanks at this moment, being asked to move out of a nice warm patch of sun on a cool day, but why not. "See you inside," she said nodding and went to knock on her guest room door.

She entered. Dumbledore had apparently been doing some redesigning. Granger decided she could live with it for a short while. But frankly, she preferred her white wallpaper with the faint yellow, blue and pink flowers. However, and perhaps more importantly, amidst the heavy green and silver, Snape seemed to be giving off better vibes, if that made any sense.

"Severus?" she said gently. Nothing happened. "Severus?" she said again, finding it odd and somehow indecent to be addressing her former professor so familiarly. But the war seemed to burn any presumed manners from Ms. Granger. Which is why she was alone out here in a cottage and very happy, thank you.

"Professor Snape?" she said, raising her voice above murmur. He seemed to retract into the blankets and pillow. Emboldened by some result she said "Severus," this time loud enough to wake the sleeping.

The man seemed to freeze and Granger felt her war wounds prick. If he had a wand, she'd have ducked already. But he didn't, and her gut chose the confidence game. "Dinner is on the table, Severus, so unless you need the attentions of a medic, please join us. Thank you."

With that she turned and left. Pausing momentarily to flick an eye to a closet. Dumbledore had apparently taken care of that, too.

When she got to the dining room, Dumbledore was installed in a chair and merrily pouring drinks he had apparently brought. And then he started chatting with her about the work it took to dig a garden and asking her why she was doing it manually.

"It feels good, sir," she answered slowly. "It takes up the days, and I get to win. Even if I can't break through all the rocks - I get in far enough for the rose bush roots. That and my grandfather kept roses.

"I can understand, on both counts," said her former headmaster, rising from the table to great Snape with a certain formality which he had neglected to show his hostess (she noticed with a certain sniff). (And he then winked at her.)

Releasing Snape from the hug, Dumbledore said, "Mr. Snape, do try the salmon. I find my mouth watering at the very thought of it."

Looking nothing but lost and withdrawn, Mr. Snape nodded formally as if to the room, sat down, and took the platters handed to him, took the food on his plate, and ate slowly. Without words. Without making eye contact. Dumbledore kept up a gentle chat with Granger about recent art shows, some novels and the vagaries of the weather. A small detour into the stress between living and living with magic as Ms. Granger felt it, the child of both muggle and magic worlds.

Snape stood suddenly and seemed about to speak. Dumbledore smiled benevolently while Granger paused, her fork full of vegetables, midway to her mouth. Only Crookshanks had the dignity to blink and stare.

"Are you dead, too?" he managed to ask, before falling again to the floor.

Dumbledore this time propelled him into the original guest room before retiring to the second himself.

"Rest easy," he said to Granger. "I think I understand what has happened and he needs time."

"Can Voldemort come back?" asked Granger. "If Snape came back, then can Voldemort?"

"No. Severus never fell in the hole that swallowed Voldemort. He paused on the threshold until the guardian demons spat him back. Earlier today."

"I don't understand why, 15 years later, he would fall into my garden."

"And the threshold demons will never explain that one, so we get to live with it. When Severus gets his legs under him, I will take him off your hands."

"I don't mean to toss you out."

"But unless our former professor and military hero has become a snake in truth, there seems something amiss with his sleepy presence."

"Yes, sir."

"Give him time Granger. He may simply need to remember who he is and how to feel."

"I'll get another chair for the garden."

"Two, even after I leave, I suspect I'll be dropping by for visits. Oh, and Granger?"

"Yes?"

"Maybe he likes roses."

"They're not leafed out yet."

"I don't see the problem."

"I'll see you in the morning, sir."

"Good night, Granger."

With some further fussing about, Granger had her house how she liked it, Crookshanks was clearly voting for sleep, and Granger settled down for her own rest. She was disturbed that she almost wished Snape were simply a former professor and not at all a martyr and hero. Her life was better having let go the martyrs and the heroes.

tbc... 


	3. I Have Always Aspired to be a Hobbit

Restart by flax  
  
JK Rowling owns the characters. They're only in this daydream for my profitless romp. :)   
  
CHAPTER THREE: I always aspired to be a hobbit  
  
After about a week of having a silent house guest who apparently did have an animagus form (that or the giant green snake in the garden only appeared when Snape wasn't around... not that he seemed likely to go anywhere), Granger nearly jumped out of her skin one day. He spoke. "What?" she asked, shocked.  
  
"Is that Snape manor?" he asked again. Granger looked. It wasn't yesterday. But today, it was. Apparently in addition to redecorating inside her house, having this house guest was also going to redecorate her horizon.  
  
"Yes, I think it is," She said. "It wasn't yesterday, in case you were confused."  
  
"And you are Ms. Hermione Granger," he continued.  
  
"Yes I am," she responded, emptying out the little flat of plants and putting them in holes she'd dug.  
  
"And the finest mind of your year has been spending the morning doing a terrier imitation without actually being a terrier," he concluded.  
  
Well, it's really him, she thought with a sigh. Not that it matters. "A terrier," she said with as much propriety as she could muster, hoping to amuse at least herself, "wouldn't dig hole exactly where they belonged."  
  
"In all the world there is not a hole out of place nor a gap out of time."   
  
"You seemed to have fallen out of a gap in time," she put in gently.  
  
"You do seem older than I remember. What have you done with your life?"  
  
Granger laughed. "I have successfully aspired to be a hobbit. You?"  
  
He didn't laugh. He just looked off at a manor house that he would have to broach someday and muttered that he was an unsuccessful butterfly who failed to bring down the heavens. Hermione would have asked him about that but he turned back into a snake and slithered around the landscaping rocks for the rest of the day.  
  
In her nightly act of faith, Granger whipped up a second place at the table, and not for Crookshanks. He never liked eating at the table in front of strangers. And at least so far, the silent guy counted as such. Tonight the guy showed up for dinner as a biped.  
  
"Dumbledore sent me an owl," he said.  
  
Granger grunted over her pasta.  
  
"He thinks I've been burnt by my fidelius charm," he continued.  
  
"You had a fidelius charm?" asked Granger, surprised, but unwilling to follow those thoughts to their conclusions.  
  
"For way too long," he said. "Since Dumbledore repossessed me from the ministry and Akzaban - it was the way they could be sure of me while I did the dirty work."  
  
Dirty work, thought Granger. I saw a little of that. "I garden now," she said to her dinner.  
  
"Tomorrow I'll be going to the manor house," he said.  
  
OK, thought Granger. "How will that help?" she asked out loud.  
  
"Do you want company?"  
  
"I think that's why I'm here, and thank you."  
  
Granger blinked. Crookshanks blinked too. Snape however focused upon his dinner.  
  
He went on to ask if she had any idea the disposition of his estate.  
  
"No idea. I. left it all," she said.  
  
"I'll be up and out tomorrow morning."  
  
"Is this your form of good bye?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Ok, then. Wear something warm. The manor looks cold and drafty." Severus laughed. That was more shocking than all that had gone on before.  
  
"How done are you with the world, Hermione?"  
  
"I guess I just didn't bother going back once I could."  
  
"I'll see you tomorrow night. Thank you for the hospitality."  
  
"You're an easy guest for a bruised hostess, Severus. Come back anytime."  
  
In the morning Hermione heard him fudtzing around early on but left him his privacy. He was gone quickly and early and Hermione got up to her own fudtzing around which could take all day on a good day. Crookshanks however didn't show up to nip at her fingers now that the guest was gone. Granger didn't get too upset: Severus needed a chaperone more than she did right now.  
  
tbc... 


	4. Are You Happy To See Me, Or Did Your Fac...

Restart by flax  
  
JK Rowling owns the characters. They're only in this daydream for my profitless romp. :)   
  
CHAPTER FOUR: Did your face freeze that way or are you happy to see me?  
  
Snape ran into Dumbledore who just happened to be examining the daffodil shoots at the manor gates.  
  
"Lovely things," said Dumbledore conversationally.  
  
With some effort Snape pulled out of his gut: "I should thank you."  
  
"You want to admit that you are glad to be back?"  
  
"I didn't say that."  
  
"You could try."  
  
"In any case, thanks for getting me another second chance."  
  
"It wasn't me."  
  
"That threshold demon kicked me out all on it's own?"  
  
"Apparently you weren't making it as a threshold demon."  
  
"My success probably scared the other threshold demons."  
  
"Saved by the sneer?"  
  
"More times than I can count."  
  
"And now?"  
  
"Now. Is Voldemort really done and gone?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"And my record is clean and strait."  
  
"Yes."  
  
"I noticed that no one came to arrest me."  
  
"Nothing gets by you."  
  
"So I can do pretty much anything I want."  
  
"Pretty much."  
  
"And the weight around my neck is a broken fidelius charm."  
  
"I was thinking those should be classified as dark magic. Do you think you could write a paper on your experience?"  
  
Snape glared at the spring croci. Somehow it didn't help. "People have survived this before," he said after a pause.  
  
"Never easily. Never without changing."  
  
"Albus, why are you here, now?" Severus looked up at his old mentor who helped him to stay in the rut for so many years. Necessary rut, but emotional rut. "If you think you owe me, call it done. I don't care."  
  
"What if I told you I had a job for you. Teaching darling little children who always do their homework, pay attention in class, and care deeply about the fundamental structure of science of which knowledge is only a reflection."  
  
Snape laughed spontaneously.  
  
"Then I'll try that one on you when you come back," said Dumbledore with undiminished cheer, turning to find a park bench. Which suddenly appeared as desired.  
  
Snape clapped him on the shoulder, laughed again, opened the gate and entered.  
  
tbc...  
  
Tracy - thanks for the review. This is the first fan fict I've ever finished. Thus I am posting. :) I let the story flow as it would. For some reason, dropping Snape into an older Granger's yard worked for me. : ) For what it's worth, the next time I write a story, I think I shall try to see if my muse will give me more characters and a betrayal. That, I think, would move something like this from a day dream to a story. I think. Thank you very much for your kind words. :) 


	5. Glypf, I Hardly Read Ye

Restart by flax  
  
JK Rowling owns the characters. They're only in this daydream for my profitless romp. :)   
  
CHAPTER FIVE: Glypf, I Hardly Read Ye  
  
Snape Manor, it must be said, has been a sturdy fixture in the wizarding world for quite some time. So many had seen it, and more importantly, so many had seen it to recognize it, that Snape Manor was a fixture. Like the mountains that had made it onto maps and oceans that had made it into minds - Snape Manor was there to stay. But while the outside reflected its recognized existence, the inside reflected what the current holder could know. Feeling foolhardy, half hoping for a nice rock pile with a few rats for dinner, Snape entered the house which was his self.  
  
It was, he was surprised to find, empty.  
  
The yawning hole of chaos which Voldemort inspired out of Snape had faded. To his surprise, the inside of house seemed solid and houselike. Not at all the chasm which ate Voldemort and crossed into otherwise unbroachable realities. Snape fell let down and relieved all at once.  
  
The furnishings and surroundings were reminiscent of his parents' days. While his parents lived. It seemd odd to see his parent's home where once there was a black churning pit. Snape looked over the room, surprised now. He had thought that in letting go, he'd let go of this too. But the room had pleasant memories. All dead now. But Severus was not a person apart from this. He thought and was surprised.  
  
A house elf tugged at the master's pant cuff.  
  
"Hello," said Severus. He was surprised that his voice wasn't angry.  
  
"Master Severus, sir, welcome home."  
  
"Glypf, is that you?"  
  
"Oh, I am so glad you remember me, sir."  
  
"How could I forget. I would like your forgiveness, Glypf."  
  
"I don't thinks I can give it sir. It's not for me to give."  
  
"Glypf, I've made our lives hell."  
  
"I know. But it's not for me to give."  
  
"Glypf, is there anything I can do for you?"  
  
"Your family left something for you in the blue room."  
  
"Shall we go?"  
  
Glypf showed him the way. At the door, Snape handed Glypf his coat. "I don't deserve the faithfulness, Glypf. Thank you for your service. If you need anything, I'm sure Dumbledore outside will be glad to help you."  
  
Glypf took the coat and cried. "It don't fit me, master," said the elf. Snape found his wand, and it soon was a coat for an elf.  
  
"You didn't have to do that," said Glypf.  
  
"I don't have to do anything. But I can no longer accept service to my house when I don't know what I and my house are. You have a good heart and a good mind, Glypf. Be free if you can. And I recommend taking safety with Dumbledore."  
  
"That didn't work out so well for you, sir."  
  
"I see no way it could have worked otherwise. I would do it again. But it would break my heart and I would fail."  
  
Glypf tugged his old charge down and hugged his neck, crying faintly on what was once the baby. "If you want to do me a favor, come see me again," he said. He wiped his head, and walked away, wearing Snape's jacket.  
  
Snape almost cried to see him go, then stood up, opened the door and walked in without looking.  
  
-----------------------------------------------  
  
And found himself in a chamber of cheap and sleazy proportions. Not tempting, not even seductive: the chambers of those who need without knowing why. Horrifically, what light there was seemed to thicken into forms and resolve into figures. Soon present were his own family and friends, those who were dead, now some haggling over costs to buy things that should never be bought while nearby others were selling what should never be sold, and yet a few were careless and unable to attend, simply hanging.  
  
Snape fell to his knees, weeping. This is what he brought upon his family. The evil of Voldemort - a man who would promise the world and then deliver it, suffering and destroyed. And there, central, sitting in a throne laughing at it all, the man himself. Tom Riddle. The man who could charm and corrupt.  
  
Crookshanks meanwhile sniffed Snape's nightmare and looked about at what the family had left for him. Crookshanks looked over the room of dust and funeral urns. The family crypt. Apparently moved from the mausoleum up to the main house, complete with stone sarcophagi and marble skeletons. Death angels and Chronus with his paddle. The most recent remains had enamel panels on their boxes: pictures of the dead from while they were living. They looked happy - images caught at celebrations or in thought. But ok, and happy. Still images, formal, for the crypt.  
  
Snape, however, was looking at something far different: Riddle was approaching, demanding Snape rejoin the game.  
  
"I am the threshold demon, I'm not in," he stuttered.  
  
Riddle laughed, slapping his face - and it worked. Snape was no threshold demon, barely there. He was there.  
  
"I'm the servant of Dumbledore and the council - you can not command me," cried Snape, almost desperate as an eternity of hell began to impress him with it's horrors. For him and for these people.  
  
Riddle merely looked at his arm and it erupted in searing pain. Snape could see his dark mark again - and then watched as his arm moved without his willing it. Riddle had sway and it would only grow. Snape closed his eyes and tried one last time.  
  
"I do not serve you," he gasped out.  
  
"You always did, you always will, and there will be no holding me back when I return this time, Severus, my loyal snake," said Riddle with glee.  
  
"What do you mean?"  
  
"You were my jailor. Now you are my freedom. I will kill in your name, so feel despair, my favorite traitor."  
  
Crookshanks had had enough. He clawed Snape on the leg.  
  
Snape fell to the floor in strange pain as he watched everything he cared about become tortured and despairing. "My heart can not serve you," he finally said.  
  
"I don't need obedience, only despair," said Riddle, triumphant.  
  
Again there was the blind sharp biting pain in his leg. Severus looked and saw Hermione Granger's familiar looking at him as if he was insane. The cat butted his calf, and then deserted him, in order to chase what had to be imaginary mice. That or space aliens. Who can fathom the mind of a cat.  
  
Severus looked at Riddle who was there, in all his horrors, and then the mad cat in a dry crypt. He could see the two different worlds. And Severus realized he could choose. His heart could serve. And he picked one. He didn't bother telling Riddle who simply screamed from his onrushing oblivion. And Severus walked around the room, crying for the dead, missing them, and grateful that they were not in pain or suffering.   
  
After a few hours, he wandered out to find Glypf sitting on the main stairs before the main door.  
  
"Glypf, I cannot express how grateful I am to you. I consider you a friend of my family, and I shall always think of you fondly."  
  
"I have no where to go, sir," said the house elf.  
  
"I'm going to try to bring home a bride, Glypf," said Severus.  
  
"No reason why I can't stay, then, yes?"  
  
"She doesn't like the house elf system. She thinks you all should be free and paid."  
  
"I like her already," said the elf, to Severus' surprise.  
  
"OK, consider yourself on salary. Would you be my butler? I have to find out what my finances are before I can tell you the salary."  
  
"Your finances are what they were," said the old white wizard, making his way in.  
  
"This isn't Hogwarts. You can't possibly know what just happened in my front room."  
  
"OK, then I don't know. But as long as your house logged you as living, we kept your accounts intact. Oh, and you have been giving charitably."  
  
"Thank you. And I am surprised. Things working out."  
  
"Surprise yourself some more. It makes my heart light."  
  
"OK. Now, Glypf, 5 galleons a week?"  
  
"Yes sir!"  
  
"Then I'll take my leave of you two and go see a garden about a girl."  
  
"And a school about a job?" reminded Albus.  
  
"Next year, Dumbledore. If Hermione will take me, then she gets a say in it to some extent. So probably, yes, but give me a year to remind myself what a caldron looks like."  
  
"You make an old man happy."  
  
"I'm glad I did it for someone one."  
  
"Welcome home, Severus."  
  
"Don't be a stranger, Albus."  
  
Albus blinked in surprise, not at the sentiment, but at the expression. He smiled at his old friend and took himself back to Hogwarts while Severus faced the next step.  
  
"So what does a woman who wants nothing want?" he asked Crookshanks who was back. The cat yawned, jumped on a couch, and promptly fell asleep. "Oddly enough, Glypf, I think this bodes well."  
  
"If you say so, sir," said Glypf, distracted by thoughts of cat hair on the couch.  
  
tbc.... 


	6. Every Garden Needs a Garden Snake, Yes?

Restart by flax  
  
JK Rowling owns the characters. They're only in this daydream for my profitless romp. :)   
  
CHAPTER FIVE: Every garden needs a garden snake, yes?  
  
It is commonly known to be true that all gardens in possession of a rock border must be in want of a garden snake, so this narrator assumes that all roads lead to Carthage, three wrongs do make a song, and romance must be in the air. It's that or the pretty sent of the early daffodils. However, from Granger's perspective, when someone got in her sun, she immediately wondered what it was about Snape that he had to occult her pleasant baking. She'd expected a return when large, warm, fuzzy Crookshanks had reclaimed her back and shoulders as if she was the pillow and it was bedtime.  
  
So with her ginger colored friend sprawled to her shadow, the other shadow caster couldn't be him. He flopped down. 'Repetition,' thought Granger, but this time it was different. He had neither fainted nor begun to slither.  
  
"Needs more rocks," he muttered.  
  
"So are you poisonous or a constrictor?" asked Granger conversationally, putting aside the spade.  
  
"I'm not a snake at all," he mentioned.  
  
Granger laughed. ('Do that again,' he thought.)  
  
"So this green snake that only shows up when you're gone - he's some other visitor?"  
  
"Snake is what I do. Not what I am. Though I would add that if warming myself on a rock in your garden was the extent of my snaking, I'd have had a much better life."  
  
"And it was ok having your around."  
  
"Hissing at the breeze?"  
  
"I can't do the world anymore."  
  
'My world?' he thought. 'It's not mine.' He answered her early question: "Poisonous."  
  
"What?"  
  
"Poorly timed answer to your earlier question. To you, I'd be poison. To Voldemort and Lucius, I was constriction."  
  
"I don't feel anymore. Even fear."  
  
"Tell me about it." He actually meant it.  
  
Granger looked him over before looking blankly at the horizon. And then gathering her stuff and wandering inside. She glared at Snape who wandered in and set himself a place at the table.  
  
"Are you better?" she asked.  
  
"Better." he answered.   
  
"Good. Get lost then."  
  
Snape blinked and then took himself out. Granger was surprised that anyone listened to her. But it was somehow reassuring. But soon after her silence did not remember him.  
  
In the morning, Snape manor had moved closer, practically sharing a border. Previously there had been a forest and hills.  
  
The next day, Granger found she shared a stone fence with the manor grounds. But at least the field was wide and swank between Granger and the manor.  
  
The third morning, Hermione found herself looking at neighbors: people whose houses imagined themselves in the shadow of the martyr's manor. Pleasant people, probably, but Hermione found it odd to be around the sound of people.  
  
With the following day, there came a mail delivery. Apparently Snape thought she needed a subscription to "Potions and Praxis."  
  
Grumpy, she gave up and read it that morning, sitting in her garden. With, to her annoyance, a green snake on the rock wall, playing dangerously with Crooshanks. When he wouldn't read she ignored him. Then Crookshanks started teasing. Then she ignored them both.  
  
There was quite a thump. Snape had fallen off the wall. Granger did check him for injuries, not that they seemed likely. The snake kept trying to curl around her arms as she looked him over. And if snakes could smile, this one certainly was. "It was Crookshanks who wanted to play, Professor Snape. I'm just making sure you don't need a medic."  
  
Two eyes looked at her innocently. She'd have none of it, uncurling the tail from her arm again and placing him back on the rock wall. "I really don't know how you managed to be a spy. You're far too cute."  
  
Smug, the snake sprawled on the stones, letting Granger go back to the journal.  
  
tbc... 


	7. Hoping

Restart by flax  
  
JK Rowling owns the characters. They're only in this daydream for my profitless romp. :)   
  
CHAPTER SIX: Hoping  
  
Granger picked up to go in for the evening. A large green snake followed along and a ginger cat led ahead. She turned back to the snake. Who seemed to turn to look at whoever was behind him.  
  
"Snape," she said with annoyance.  
  
He looked back at her.  
  
'I'm not joking when I say I can't do the world,' she thought. "I'm fine right here," she said.  
  
The snake stood up, paused. She opened the front door and with some delicate body language, he accepted an invite in.  
  
"No you are not," he said. He zapped the dining room, producing a dinner.  
  
"Excuse me?" she said, pouring tea. "Frankly, I'm living exactly as you would have if you'd been given the chance."   
  
"Given the chance, I am returning to teaching, returning to research, and hopefully finding friends and family."  
  
"You've got to be kidding me."  
  
"You want to hear my proposal?"  
  
"Now you are kidding me."  
  
"No - but I'll hold off. Have some more sauce on your rice."  
  
"Snape, do I need to throw you out again?"  
  
"Why don't you tell me what happened."  
  
"Nothing happened. Other than my friends dying around me. And then I screwed up and killed someone. Not uncommon, according to the ministry. So, nothing happened."  
  
"And nothing's happened ever since."  
  
"I'll leave the world for other people."  
  
"Isn't that a trifle selfish?"  
  
"Who are you and what did you do with Professor Snape?"  
  
"The death - tell me about it."  
  
"I threw a curse. It hit wrong."  
  
"And you intended this?"  
  
"Don't be silly. And I've been over this ground. I know it wasn't my fault."  
  
"Then?"  
  
"You're point?"  
  
"What do you want to do, Granger?"  
  
She played with her food.  
  
"Well?"  
  
"Why do you ask?"  
  
"Are we moving back to my proposal?"  
  
"No. But explain."  
  
"We get along Granger. I'm going back to the world. I want you along."  
  
"So I have to solve my life."  
  
"You have to become comfortable."  
  
"I'm comfortable."  
  
"Shall I laugh now or just flag this as a laugh moment?"  
  
"Everything is settled here."  
  
"Tell me there's nothing you can imagine doing in research right now."   
  
"There's nothing I can imagine doing in research right now."  
  
"Kimball's article didn't poke you with ideas about Iris veins?"  
  
Good sign - she didn't answer.  
  
"I want a wife, Granger."  
  
"Then why push research?"  
  
"I don't want you angry once I go back in a year."  
  
"A year?"  
  
"Got a job offer."  
  
"That's fast."  
  
"Finish a degree or an apprenticeship, and it would be as fast for you."  
  
"I'll think about it."  
  
"I win!" he said, putting his hands in the air. Granger glared. But Crookshanks apparently decided he was family, leapt to the table, and sat waiting for his portion, which Snape dutifully provided.  
  
"That only gets you brownie points with Crookshanks," said Granger.  
  
"So when in your professional career can we start a family?" he replied.  
  
Granger glared, but it didn't last long as Snape found his way around the table and kissed his wife to be.  
  
"You're not redesigning this house, Snape."  
  
"My name is Severus, Granger, and who needs to redesign? Let's just add it to the manor house."  
  
"Show me plans and I'll think about it."  
  
"Plans? Plans? You're marrying an artist, dear."  
  
"I better get to ok this before it happens." She gave him a look.  
  
He only smiled. She glared more. "I'm open to redesigns," he said apologetically.  
  
Hermione went out, walked in her garden, noticed that the manor seemed to now be on the wrong side of the stone fence. In fact, it grew out of her cottage.  
  
"SNAPE," she yelled as she reentered. He was nowhere to be seen. But through Albus' newly installed guest room she found his manor house. "My cottage is NOT attaching to your house in some echoing lonely ball room," she yelled into the gloom.  
  
"So tell me where it does," came back his voice.  
  
Hermione rolled her eyes before setting out to explore Snape's nest, muttering as she went. After all, this Manor was clearly going to have to fit inside _her_ cottage.  
  
The End. 


End file.
